Becca and I both enjoy art and have talked about taking an class together for a while, so I was delighted when she gave me a set of drawing classes as a post-show gift.

The classes are in Lakewood at the Washington Heights Art Center, a small red-bricked building that feels like a repurposed church.

The first week was about reducing pictures to shapes, lights, and shadows. The teacher gave us paintings to sketch:

Week two was about portraits and how to smudge our way to contouring:

For homework we were supposed to do the same techniques on a portrait photograph.

I chose this picture of Ed:

And came up with this:

Not quite right. I asked the teacher about it and she said I made the nose too long. She took some scissors to it (after checking to make sure it wasn’t sacred) and overlapped the halves:

A bit better, yes.

This week we ripped out images from magazines to make collages which we then were supposed to draw. Here’s my collage:

And the rough draft sketch:

Our homework is to add color and finish them.

I’m enjoying the class. I am learning new tricks and realizing how many tricks I’ve picked up along the years of many art projects. It’s also nice to have some structure for the summer that forces me out and among people.